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Doc Mitchell’s a good guy. There I was: kneeling, hands tied, facing down the barrel of a gun above a shallow grave in the middle of the Mojave. My killer’s a classy guy—he looks a bit like a sentient Ken doll—and he apologizes before pulling the trigger. Flash of white, cut to black. Doc’s sitting across from me. Careful, he says, I’ve been out for a few days. His eyes are dark and his mustache is a wispy white. He looks like a post-apocalyptic version of an old-fashioned country doctor, which is what he is.

This being Fallout: New Vegas, I enter my name, edit my appearance, and choose my stats. I put a bunch of points into speech (as I heard you can defeat the final boss just by talking to him). It’s my first Fallout game, and the possibilities seem endless. I can walk to the bar and trigger the first quest, or I can wander off by myself. I can scrounge for cigarettes in people’s cabinets. I can repair robots. I can befriend robots. I can appoint a robot as sheriff. I can meet people who eat people. I can eat them, too, if I want. I can play the way I want to play, or so I heard.

For those too young to remember, the Pac-Man craze of 1981 and 1982 was insane. It was the videogame version of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, where an innocuous Japanese arcade game caught lightning in a bottle and connected with the zeitgeist in a massive, massive way. It was a major turning point for Gen-X pop culture, and along with it came every attempt imaginable to cash in on the game’s success.

by PopMatters Staff

After crowdfunding an album two years before Kickstarter made their UK debut and creating something like a proto-Bandcamp for their label Corporate Records, the Indelicates are now releasing what is possibly the first ever virtual reality single for a song entitled “The Generation That Nobody Remembered”. The free download was designed for use with the Oculus Rift head-set, but a 2d version also exists, along with a simple name-your-price MP3 of the song.

Many of us who are single hate this time of year with the fire of a thousand suns. Maybe that’s a little too dramatic, but what else can you say about a holiday solely focused on happy couples trading romantic gifts during what is often the coldest, slushiest month of the year? Plenty of singles will be stuck alone indoors this V-Day, forced to sit through mushy jewelry commercials on TV or sappy ballad requests on the radio.

We know what you’re going through, and we’re here to help. Here are some pop culture suggestions: movies, books, and video games designed to get your mind off the subject.